HeyJaredBeautifully Complex
Join parenting coach and mom-in-the-trenches, Penny Williams, as she helps parents, caregivers, and educators harness the realization that we are all beautifully complex and marvelously imperfect.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 12
- Latest publication
- Sep 24, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 9, 2026
Latest episodes
376: The Problems with Punishment, with Bryan Post (opens the original)
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Punishment feels like it's working. Compliance shows up fast, and for a minute it looks like the lesson landed. But according to child behavior expert Bryan Post, that quick compliance is often the opposite of learning, it's the brain shutting down under stress. In this conversation, Bryan and I dig into the real difference between punishment and discipline. Punishment is force or coercion aimed at controlling, suppressing, or changing behavior. Discipline, by definition, is meant to teach. But
375: Co-Regulation Ideas for Real Life, with Penny Williams (opens the original)
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A grilled cheese sandwich turned into one of the clearest parenting lessons I've had in a long time. I was coaching a mom this week whose tween was trying to make her own grilled cheese, and it was a struggle. The butter wasn't spreading evenly, the flip kept falling apart, and the frustration built fast. Mom was doing everything "right," patient, encouraging, right there to help, and it still wasn't landing. She wanted to know how to get her kid through that discomfort without giving up. My ans
374: Teaching the Body to Feel Safe, with Holly Bridges (opens the original)
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Your kid's nervous system is not a machine you can just tell to calm down. It is more like an octopus: sentient, sensitive, and completely uninterested in being managed. That is the metaphor body-based nervous system expert Holly Bridges uses to describe what is actually happening underneath meltdowns, shutdowns, and the constant hypervigilance so many of our neurodivergent kids live with. Holly wrote “Reframe Your Thinking Around Autism” using polyvagal theory and brain plasticity over fifteen
373: Overcoming The Wall of Awful, with Brendan Mahan, M.Ed. (opens the original)
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Your child isn't avoiding that task because they're lazy or defiant. They're standing in front of an invisible wall made of every past failure and hard feeling stacked on top of each other, and getting past it takes real emotional work most of us never see. I'm bringing back Brendan Mahan, ADHD coach, consultant, and creator of the Wall of Awful, to talk about his new book, “Overcoming the Wall of Awful.” Brendan's framework has become one of the most useful shorthand tools I know for understand
372: The Neurodivergent Learner, Emily King, Ph.D. (opens the original)
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Academic learning is the cherry on top. Everything else has to be in place first before a child can even access the parts of their brain that do the reading, writing, and math — rested, safe, connected, not hungry, not overwhelmed. That's the reframe returning guest Dr. Emily King brought to our conversation this week, and it's one I wish every parent and teacher heard before the school year started. Dr. Emily King is a licensed psychologist and former school psychologist who now spends most of
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